Hi. My name is Kendall.

Allow me to properly introduce myself.

I am a 23 year old female currently residing in Humble Texas, just northeast of Houston (I feel like I’m answering the old a/s/l question.)

I was the 3rd child born to Patricia and Patrick. I have 2 older sisters, one is 33 and one is 28. We are all 5 years apart. All of our names begin with a K and our middle names (in order) are Linn, Michelle and Nicole. Get it? L,M,N.

My mother is half Japanese, my grandmother is 100% Japanese, and I therefore, am 25% Japanese. My grandmother married an American soldier with a deep love for baseball right after the 2nd World War. They met at a baseball game in which my grandfather was catching for the Army baseball team. They married and had a child, my grandfather moved back to America to find a place for them to live, and a year later, my grandmother and mother followed.

A bunch of stuff happened between now and the time I was born but really, we don’t have all day. I was born in 1985 as surprise! you are having another baby. I was born via cesarian on my grandmother’s birthday. It is a special bond we have always shared. Kind of silly to bond over a Birthday, no?

Growing up I was always a tiny little thing and my Mom always said I was going to be her petite child. Ha, jokes on you Mom! I had a pretty darn happy life when I was a wee lass, we lived in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood in a gigantic house. My Mom stopped working to take care of my sister’s and I when I was born. Life was good.

When I was 6, my Dad told us he was leaving. Now, being only 6 years old, I didn’t understand. I thought he was just packing for a long business trip. All I remember was hearing my sister, who at the time was 11, sobbing. Shortly after he moved out, so did we. Good ol’ reliable pop had fooled my mother into thinking he had been paying the house note and that she had nothing to worry about. Until she got the Eviction notice.

Mom moved the girlies three to a low working class rent neighborhood a few miles down the road from where we previously lived. I went to the same school but suddenly to my friends, it was as if I didn’t exist. Nobody wanted to come over anymore, they didn’t invite me to their houses, and I had to make a whole new set of friends in my new neighborhood.

We lived on my Mom’s menial salary for a long time. It was really tough and I knew my Mom was struggling, even at such a young age. We lasted in that house about 4 years, until things in the neighborhood starting going sour.

First, and I remember this like it was yesterday, it was The 4th of July and I was supposed to be going to sleep but, it was so loud outside that I couldn’t. I looked out my window and it was like a War Zone. Two rival gangs were having a brawl in front of our house. Each gang had about 30 – 50 people and they were ALL fighting. I saw knives and I saw huge chains and I saw people on the ground. I ran out to tell my Mom and of course, she didn’t believe me at first. After she looked at the window, the cops were called. I can distinctly remember watching the gangbangers scurry away like roaches when they heard the sirens. The injured were thrown into the backs of pickup trucks and others just scattered away into the woods. We sat out on the front walkway with a bowl of popcorn and the blue and red lights flashing in our faces while we watched the slow ones get taken to jail.

After that night was the night our house was broken into. Some of the boys my middle sister had started hanging around got mad at her and broke into our house. They busted the back sliding glass door and pretty much left a path of destruction. They smeared dog shit on the carpet, took everything out of the cupboards and smashed it, turned my Mom’s room upside down and threw things out of my sister’s bedroom window. They didn’t take anything though, just wanted to ruin everything my Mom had worked hard to give us.

Shortly after the B&E (haha, Dane Cook is funny) they “hoodlums” decided to start using street lights as target practice. Then they decided it would be fun to burn down some dudes garage, with a Corvette inside. Oh fun. The last and final straw was the drive by shooting on our house. Thank God nobody got hurt but had I been standing a few feet away from where I was there is no telling if I’d be here today or not.

So, I started the 5th grade in a new school, I didn’t know a soul. My sister got into a car wreck and almost died, she was in the ICU for 2 weeks. My mother was in the 3rd of 4th year of dating a man name Robert. Dude was intense. One night when it was just my Mom, Robert and I at the house, things got out of hand. I was in the living room and they were in the dining room. I heard him slap her across the face and her fall to the ground. I wasn’t having it. I went in the room and began beating him with my 6th grader fists on the back as he stood over her and spit on her and yelled in her face.

She got up and grabbed the phone to dial 911 but he took the phone and threw it against the wall. The phone shattered. She ran into her bedroom and again, tried to call 911 but was deflected again. Mom and I finally managed to get him out of the house. We couldn’t get the door shut though because he was pushing against it with all of his weight. I finally ran full speed at the door and threw all of my weight at it causing his toes, which were propping the door open, to break. You ever want to see a man get mad? Have a 6th grader break all of his toes. He came at me and put his hands around my throat. I grabbed a hammer that was lying on the folding counter in the laundry room. I told him I would kill him and I was very serious. He must have known I was serious because with midswing of the hammer, he let me go.

Soon after, we heard sirens and he took off. My sister’s had their big guy friends come by and watch guard all night in case he came back. He broke in a few times to scare us but, for the most part, left us alone.

My adolescence is a blur of normally teenagey things and events that led me to this point in my life. I really just am tired from writing this longassed post and want it tobeoveralready.

My point is this, I have had alot of fucked up stuff happen to me in my life but I have never ever ever blamed those events for what I have let myself become. So should I let myself think that because my Daddy abandoned us and left us to rot in the welfare line be the reason I weigh 221 pounds? Should I let myself think that because I once almost murdered a man be the reason I can eat an entire family sized bag of Cool Ranch Doritos?

The answer is no, I only have myself to blame for what I am and who I have become. Sure, those events have made me stronger but, not strong enough to deal with the one thing still standing in my way, myself.